Sumptuary Laws: When The Judgy Jerks Get To Dictate Your Wardrobe
A full survey of sumptuary laws is not going to fit in a blog post but let us start with a definition. A sumptuary law keeps people from showing off their cash and limits what they can spend on. These laws could be aimed at weddings, funerals, or feasts.
But notably, especially in the later Middle Ages in places like France and Spain, they were aimed at limiting what people could wear.
Specifics
Particularly in the 1400’s (remember, 1000 years is a long time and I can only speak to certain points,) France, Italy, Spain, England and Scotland did things like restrict how long people could have their trains and sleeves, and how many pearls, jewels and rings could be worn. Certain fancy fabrics, embroidery, trimming, and lining were tightly controlled or banned.
Bishop Bessarion of Venice, in an attempt to curry God’s favor when Venice was in debt, mandated that wives of knights could have four fancy dresses, six jeweled rings and six plain rings, while the wives of nobles, notaries, and silk guild members could have three fancy dresses, one jewel, and four types of rings. A worker’s wife could have a velvet dress, two plain rings, and two bejeweled rings.
The bishop’s law was written with a preamble about extravagance being immoral in general.
Other laws from England and Scotland in the 1500’s were written with preambles about stopping “the use of forrayn commodities as be not necessary for us.”
Scotland passed a law in 1581 whose concern was “subjects of meane estaite presuming to counteraict his hieness and his nobilitie in the use of and wearing of coastlie cleithing.” In other words, peasants dressing like their betters. This one specifically excluded women, so peasant dudes dressing like lords were the people effected.
A law in Nuremburg from the 1400’s condemned flies of contrasting colors or stuffed flies for guys, along with chiding them for leaving them ‘shamelessly bare and uncovered in the presence of honorable women and maidens.’
In 1638, a Florentine law disallowed colored dresses for women who had been married for more than six years. Instead, they had to wear black dresses, though they could have colored sleeves, bodices, and collars. If they had been married more than 12 years, they had to wear all black, all of the time.
There was also an attempt by ecclesiastics in the 1300’s to mandate veils for married women, which would then be forbidden to sex workers. This failed when some clever soul figured out how to make transparent veils and another figured out how to make a veil that was completely opaque. Since the idea was to enforce modesty on married women, a veil that masked nothing or a veil that acted as a mask was a case of following the letter of the law while flouting the spirit so hard the spirit cried ‘parley.’
Reactions
In a case of effective lobbying, a Venetian noblewoman named Cristina Corner got her jewels and finery exempted by the emperor himself from an upcoming sumptuary law by citing her noble parentage and the fact that she had the clothes before the law came into effect. Some women after her wrote to the pope asking to be exempted because Venice was known for visual spectacle, and they were a part of that spectacle.
Andrea Gritti wrote on behalf of 12 of his female relatives to say that they should be exempted because they wanted to please their husbands.
In 1453, Cardinal Bessarion tried to deny all women the legal right to wear gold and silver cloth. A noblewomen and famed essayist named Nicolusa Sanuti took umbridge and wrote an essay declaring that fashion was ‘a sign of our virtue’ as builders of society which we are given in place of the political honors men got. This didn’t change the law one whit, but the essay got passed around in scholarly circles and debated for a time.
By the 1600’s, Venice was constantly updating their sumptuary laws to allow less social distinction. Sometimes this meant that a woman who married a butcher could get gussied up in silks, while her spouse dressed down for his trade. There was plenty of flouting these laws, and they were always up for debate.
General Lessons:
It’s perilous to summarize the gist of sumptuary laws, or any type of law, without digging into the details or admitting your limitations. I will point out that these kinds of restrictions don’t seem to accomplish anything useful. Few pursuits are dumber than complaining about what other people are wearing, except actually legislating what people can wear.
It’s good for historical fiction though. It could be a source of social conflict. Put yourself in Nicolusa Sinuti’s shoes and write your own treatise.
Sources:
Crime in Medieval Europe by Trevor Dean 1972
A History of Women In the West, Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, General Editors 1992